Don said:
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Occasionally, the bodily memory of spirits is activated and gives the connected person the impression that these memories are hers and that she must have reincarnated. Ian Stevenson's celebrated research on the past life recall of young children is flawed by its failure to take this insight seriously. In at least one of his cases, the child's alleged past life continued until well after he was born--a sure sign of possession or at least some form of tempororary spirit merger.
I'm going to have to respectfully and heartily disagree with your conclusion here. It appears to me that you are making assumptions that time is linear. Linear time is an illusion that we have agreed to while in a specific incarnation. If you accept the idea that time is relative (Albert Einstein), and the Greater Soul's experience that everything is happening at once, overlapping incarnations are not a problem. Possession is the last thing that I would think of to explain time differences in incarnations. "Temporary spirit merger" is also an odd way of explaining the phenomenom. In the sense that an OverSoul is experiencing everything at once, and has complete knowledge of it's many distinct incarnations, you could beg the idea that on a macro level, the spirits are merged. But, the individual understanding and experience of each separate incarnation is of one continuous life, with birth, death, and all experiences between...all on the micro level.
Relativity of simultaneity: two events that appear simultaneous to an observer A will not be simultaneous to an observer B if B is moving with respect to A.
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ES discovers that discarnate heavenly souls readily grasp the significance of his anti-reincarnation astral discoveries, but humans confined to the world of spirits (= Focus 24-26) refuse to believe because they are unwilling to experience the inevitable belief system crash that would cause them to renounce reincarnation
I have experienced the "belief system crash" in ALL areas of metaphysics. I have come to the conclusion that the only thing I can know with absolute certainty is that "I" exist. Everything else is speculation, faith, and personal beliefs. We are affected by our personal "belief" filters while in the astral. If you look for demons, you will find them. If you carry fear with you into the astral, you can manifest fearful beings. If you look for Jesus, or a similar type of being, you will find them. Thoughtforms are as "real" as any human is. I would be interested in seeing any documented NDE case of a person who had absolutely no knowledge of the human or the light being Jesus, and still returned to life claiming that is who they saw. It would need the further test of being documented as a clear-cut clinically dead experience for me to lend it credence.
I have had so called "higher" experiences in the astral. I don't think that I've ever read or heard of a higher experience than the experience of "Being God" and knowing all at once. This experience left my physical body a wreck as I wasn't energetically ready for it. Because of this experience (and similar ones), the closest thing that I can know (without getting into beliefs) is that there is no ultimate judgement, and that everything and every experience is possible.
While I respect Monroe's and Moen's works, along with many other researchers in this field, it is quite clear to me that every one of their experiences were seen through their personal filters. These filters are based upon their own prior knowledge, both on earth and the before and afterlife of their human incarnation. I also extend the idea that personal filters are at play in Swedenborg's, Robert Bruce's, and my own personal experiences.
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According to ES, we are normally connected in this way to 2 good spirits and 2 evil spirits.
In my experience, this is a very limited belief and dependent solely on ES's own personal filters during his out of body experiences.
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Robert A. Monroe [= RAM] creates the sort of transitory possession that ES has in mind during an OBE visit to Locale III: "I temporarily displaced him. My knowledge of him...and his past came...evidently [from] his memory bank. I have wondered what embarrassment I have caused him ("Journeys Out of the Body", p. 96)."
RAM's possession experience should have made him suspicious that his implausible astral past life experiences are bogus fabrications.
There are quite a large number of reported experiences that entail an ability of stepping into historical person's, contemporary person's, and one's own personal experiences (during this lifetime) as a way of experiencing. Because all possibilities exist at once, it's unlikely that any history is changed. One is merely experiencing one set of experiences that number into infinity. Again, the traditional "possession" is the last thing that I would think of in such a case. Also, again, you could beg the idea that this is an innocuous case of possession. But, with an infinity of possibilities, I think of it more as a case of picking the possiblity that you resonate with, rather than a possession and changing of the course of history. Similar to a virtual reality experience.
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We are asked to believe that Catholic priests would order such an atrocity
I think we are all aware of the capabilities of all of humankind to do harm to another, and in a particular contemporary situation, priests have been known to perform atrocities on innocent children. I'm not implying that Catholics have the gold medal in atrocities, but you brought it up. :D